EDITORIAL: The political demise of Jagmeet Singh

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Now that he’s dropped the fiction that he’s running for prime minister, NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh is urging voters to elect New Democrat MPs to prevent a Liberal “super majority.”

The reason that argument is falling flat is that no one has contributed more to the prospect of a Liberal “super majority” than Singh.

He propped up the current Liberal minority government under former prime minister Justin Trudeau, through the supply and confidence agreement he signed with them in March 2022.

He continued that support right up to September 2024, despite the polls showing increasing disillusionment with the Liberals and growing support for a federal election.

To now argue it’s a bad idea to give the Liberals a big majority government, after he was in bed with them for two-and-a-half years, is absurd.

Today, the polls show NDP voters are deserting Singh’s party to vote for Mark Carney and the Liberals, to defeat Pierre Poilievre and the Conservatives, who, unlike Singh and the NDP, are holding on to their traditional support.

While Singh argues the NDP pressured the Liberals into bringing in pharmacare and dental care, the political reality is that when New Democrats sign on as junior partners with the Liberals, voters credit the senior partner with any reforms that come out of the deal.

The same thing happened in Ontario in the 1985 provincial election when then-NDP leader Bob Rae signed a two-year governing accord with Liberal premier David Peterson’s minority government, which turned into a massive Liberal majority in 1987.

Polls suggest national support for the NDP is so low that it may lose official party status in this election, which requires the NDP to win at least 12 seats compared to the 24 it had when Carney called the election.

In fact, NDP support nationally has been declining and has been stagnant since Jack Layton reached the party’s high-water mark of 103 seats in the 2011 federal election.

That was followed by Tom Mulcair winning 44 seats in the 2015 election, followed by 24 seats in 2019 and 25 seats in 2021 under Singh, who has been party leader since October 2017.

After this election, the NDP will likely be looking for a new leader.